Another Study Shows the Benefits of Kindness

Kindness. From On the Fence with Jesus.

Longtime readers probably know that acts of kindness can improve your mood over the long term, but here's another study to heap on the pile of evidence. The Globe and Mail reports on a York University study that monitored 700 people as they performed small acts of kindness over the course of a week. Participants helped other people for 5-15 minutes a day, and still felt the positive mood effects six months later compared to a control group.

The researchers first evaluated participants' levels of depression, happiness, and self-esteem, then evaluated them again four more times over the six-month period. Lead author Myriam Mongrain says, "What’s amazing is that the time investment required for these changes to occur is so small. We’re talking about mere minutes a day."

Mongrain theorizes that compassion boosts our mood because it gives us meaning and self esteem. "If you make a conscious decision to not be so hard on others," she says, "it becomes easier to not be so hard on yourself. Furthermore, providing support to others often means that we will get support back. That is why caring for and helping others may be the best possible thing we can do for ourselves. On a less selfish level, there is something intrinsically satisfying about helping others and witnessing their gratitude."

You can read the actual study in a forthcoming issue of The Journal of Happiness Studies. Read more about this general topic in my blog post here.

Apparently Working Long Hours Makes Americans Happier?

From Static.

Yeah, this one's just crazy enough that it might be true. The Daily Mail reports that Americans who work long hours are happier than those who don't, while in Europe, that trend is reversed. This information comes from a study at the University of Texas at Dallas. The study's authors could not conclude whether work actually CAUSES happiness in America, but they speculate that the results have more to do with worker expectations and the pursuit of income than with their actions.

American and European survey respondents were asked to rate themselves as "Very Happy," "Pretty Happy," or "Not too Happy." Results showed that "Very Happy" Europeans dropped from around 28% to 23% as work hours increased from under 17 a week to more than 60. American happiness, on the other hand, stayed the same as work hours increased, while their sense of "bliss" increased. This holds true despite other factors, such as age, marital status, and income.

Economics professor Richard Easterlin, who was not involved in the study, but comments on it anyway, theorizes that Americans believe more in the rewards of hard work. "It's not really that hard work brings more success in the U.S. than in Europe; it's what people believe in," he says.

You can read the actual study in the April issue of the Journal of Happiness Studies.

Happy Voters More Likely to Vote

Hmm, yes, this picture confirms the research!
From NY Daily News.

Today The Montreal Gazette reports that people who are happy are more likely to vote. This information comes from research to be published in a forthcoming issue of The Journal of Happiness Studies. The researchers compared American survey respondents' voting habits and political participation (displaying a yard sign or working for a campaign, etc.) with their overall happiness. They found a positive correlation, even when controlling for income, sex, race, education, and interest in government.

According to study authors Patrick Flavin and Michael J. Keane, these results ran counter to their original hypothesis. "We went in with the theory that people who were satisfied with their lives would be less likely to participate; they're doing fine, so there's less reason to get involved in politics or to change the status quo," says Flavin. "But we found that people who (said) that they were very satisfied, as compared to not very satisfied, were about seven percentage points more likely to vote."

This perhaps means that once a country reaches a certain level of stability and prosperity, happy citizens can vote on things they didn't have time to care about previously--like the environment--so they come to the polls in greater numbers. The researchers add that that the results do not work the other way around; in other words, there is no evidence that voting increases happiness.

It seems kind of backward, since you would think that unhappy people would want to vote for change, but that's apparently the way it is! (You can read the actual 30-page study in PDF format here.)